We all strive to build and maintain beautiful websites. Additionally, we know landing pages need to be crisp, clean, load fast, and look trustworthy to avoid a high bounce rate and that call-to-action messages must be placed prominently. Also, navigation bars have to be intuitive and make finding a specific webpage quick and easy. If you're looking to revamp your nonprofit's website, chances are you've poured over check lists just like this to make sure you're not missing a thing.
In previous blog posts, we’ve discussed how to make a beautiful website, what people are looking for in a website, and how to keep a web visitor’s interest.
But what about after you build that fancy new website? Unfortunately, web visitors do not automatically start streaming to the annals of your website because you’ve built something new with all the latest bells and whistles.
So what are these visitors looking for, and how do I get them to come to my website?
The answer, simply put, is content. Your website’s content needs to be up to date, engaging, shareable, and relatable to the target audience you’re looking to attract. If not, without batting an eyelash, they’ll go elsewhere for the content or information they’re looking for.
But what information are they looking for exactly?
Well, that all depends on who your target audience is. Their age, gender, income level, what your nonprofit does, and what action you would like those web visitors to take on your website and a bevy of other variables.
Generally speaking, though, most content can be lumped into one of several different categories.
- Blog posts: These can be about events you’re planning or have run, updates on what you’re currently working on, or newsworthy stories that were not covered by the traditional press. Ranging anywhere between 250-800 words, blogs posts should be full of up to the second information that your target audience needs to better serve your nonprofit.
- Stories from the people you serve: Content of this variety will come from the individuals, populations, or demographics your nonprofit is serving. Tell a success story to highlight the effectiveness of your nonprofit. This can then be leveraged to spur donations, or raise morale among your employees.
- News, press releases, and third party content: This is content that was created about your profit by any third party sources. Keeping this information up to date and relevant shows that your nonprofit is not only in the eyes of the public, but is being talked about by the masses.
- Infographics: These highly shareable images have taken the nonprofit world, and the Internet as a whole by storm. Infographics are considered by far the most effective way for a data to be effectively communicated on the Internet.
But not all content has to be traditional, long form content in the form of blogs, press releases and aggregated third party news content.
Believe it or not, your nonprofit’s newsletter sign up page, donation forms, event registration, and chapter finder page are all important pieces of content. This content, if left unattended to, however, can make your nonprofit’s website appear less credible, and your nonprofit appear inattentive.
